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Curated playlist

Supervillains with their own comic book titles

  • Magneto (Marvel Comics)In 2014, IGN ranked Magneto first on its list of the top 100 comic book villains. Six years earlier, Stan Lee, the writer who co-created him, said in an interview that he never thought of Magneto as a villain at all. Magneto is a Marvel…
  • Joker (character)The Joker was nearly killed off in his second comic appearance. An editor saved him with a hastily drawn panel.
  • Emma FrostEmma Frost made her first appearance in The Uncanny X-Men #129, published in January 1980, as an enemy of the X-Men. Decades of Marvel Comics stories later, she is one of that team's most central members and leaders. She is a mutant, one…
  • Doctor OctopusDoctor Octopus, the Marvel Comics villain known as Doc Ock, began as a name before he was anything else. Stan Lee, who created him with the artist Steve Ditko, later described how the idea arrived. "For some reason, I thought of an…
  • Poison Ivy (character)Poison Ivy exists because of a television show, and the artist who sketched her said so plainly. Carmine Infantino recalled: "The only reason she came about was because of Catwoman on the Batman show. They wanted more female villains."…
  • Lex LuthorLex Luthor has no superpowers, no secret identity and no alien heritage, yet he has outlasted nearly every other enemy of Superman. Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created him, and he first appeared in Action Comics #23 in April…
  • Sabretooth (character)Sabretooth, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is believed to be Victor Creed, makes a point of finding Wolverine on his birthday. Writer Chris Claremont described the ritual in his own words. On every one of his birthdays, he said,…
  • Apocalypse (character)En Sabah Nur is the birth name of Apocalypse, a supervillain from Marvel Comics, and Marvel says the name means "The First One." That translation is considered grammatically incorrect. Broken into parts, the name joins words for "the,"…
  • CatwomanCatwoman first appeared in Batman #1, published in the spring of 1940, and in that issue she did not wear a costume at all. She was called only "the Cat," a mysterious burglar and jewel thief. For most of the story she was disguised as an…
  • DeathstrokeDeathstroke wears a mask split between black and orange, and it covers a right eye that is missing. He is Slade Joseph Wilson, a mercenary and former U.S. Army soldier. Within the DC Universe he is regarded as the greatest and deadliest…
  • Doctor DoomDoctor Doom is a comic book villain who answers to no court outside his own country. He rules the fictional eastern European nation of Latveria, and his status as head of state has historically shielded him from prosecution for crimes…
  • Two-FaceTwo-Face, the coin-tossing enemy of Batman, makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #66, published in August 1942. Late in that issue, Batman chases him down and corners him. The hero offers a simple deal: give up and start over.…
  • Harley QuinnHarley Quinn, the DC Comics character, first appeared on screen on the 11th of September 1992, in the 22nd episode of Batman: The Animated Series. The episode was called Joker's Favor, and she was supposed to appear in it once and never…
  • GalactusGalactus first appeared in Fantastic Four #48, cover dated March 1966, as a god-like figure who fed on the energy of living planets. His creators, writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, wanted to escape the standard villain. Lee…
  • Mystique (character)Mystique, the blue-skinned shapeshifter of Marvel Comics, has an earliest recorded appearance in her own stories that dates to the years around 1900. At that time she lived in a male guise as a consulting detective. She formed a romance…
  • Mephisto (Marvel Comics)Mephisto first appeared in Silver Surfer #3, cover dated December 1968. Writer Stan Lee and penciler John Buscema created him for Marvel Comics. They modeled him on Mephistopheles, the demon of the Faust legend, who is sometimes called…
  • DeadpoolDeadpool, the masked mercenary of Marvel Comics, once ended a storyline by breaking out of his own book and into the real world. There he confronted the writers and artists who were making the comic, and he turned to the reader with a…
  • Kang the ConquerorKang the Conqueror, the Marvel Comics supervillain whose birth name is Nathaniel Richards, first appeared in Fantastic Four #19, dated October 1963. In that issue he wore the crown of a pharaoh and went by Rama-Tut. He was a criminal from…
  • Kingpin (character)The Kingpin first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50, cover-dated July 1967, at a moment when Peter Parker had quit being Spider-Man. Stan Lee had a particular idea for the new villain. He wanted a man who ran organized crime the way a…

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